CHARLOTTE — When the University of North Carolina at Charlotte first opened Jerry Richardson Stadium, the Student Government Association passed a resolution requiring the university to run it as a zero-waste facility.
The goal was that 90% or more of the trash accumulated at the stadium would be diverted from landfills. Currently, the stadium is averaging a little more than 80% waste diversion per game. Michael Lizotte, UNC’s sustainability manager, said that’s due to a massive combined effort from student workers, volunteers and staff from Recycling and Chartwells.
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“It’s very difficult. A lot of universities will start a program like this and they’ll find that they can’t maintain it,” he said.
It’s hard, messy and tedious work at times. Sunday after the 49ers’ sold-out game against East Carolina University, student volunteers spent hours sorting through all of the trash collected at the game, ensuring it could actually go to recycling or compost. Logan David, who has worked as an ECO Rep for two years, explained bottles and cans have to be empty and paper needs to be separated from plastic.
“A lot of people will combine. Like they’ll put their trash in their water bottle and throw it away, but everything’s got to be individual for it to actually get recycled, because one little thing can mess up a whole batch of recycling,” he said.
Once everything is sorted and separated, David and his fellow student workers weigh everything to determine how much they’re recycling, how much is getting composted and how much still has to go to the landfill.
“We can’t quite recover everything yet,” Lizotte said.
A lot of the waste diversion efforts happen long before the trash is ever collected. Lizotte said the university works closely with vendors to make sure what they’re selling actually can get recycled or composted.
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“Any new vendor we have to go through, ‘Yes, can you serve this on paper? Can you serve this with a compostable plastic spoon?’” he said.
Lizotte said he’s been in touch with other universities with hopes to develop a similar program and every time, he said he wants to be clear about what it takes to do it thoroughly.
“A lot of times what happens with jobs like this is they stay in the background and they stay behind the scenes,” he said.
Lizotte believes the volunteer opportunity for students provides a unique benefit, which allows students to learn about the recycling and composting process, better understand where their waste goes, and prevent a lot of extra dirty work for the university’s maintenance staff.
“If you don’t value that or you think that’s inefficient then a program like this is hard to copy,” he said.
UNC Charlotte has a larger goal of keeping at least 60% of trash from across campus out of landfills by 2030. Last year, the school was diverting about 30% of its trash.
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